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January 23, 2014

The Way You Write Cover Letters is a Complete Waste of Time

By Danny Rubin

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Connie Going has spent decades as a social worker and placed over 1,000 children in foster homes. Many times, she has matched a needy child with a loving family. Sometimes, it takes one or two tries to find the perfect fit. And one time, with a rebellious boy named Taylor, she could never get it right.

That’s why, after ten years placing Taylor — unsuccessfully — with different foster families, Connie made a remarkable decision. She decided to adopt Taylor as her own son and let him live alongside her two other children.

Great story, isn’t it? No, I didn’t make it up. It’s the focus of a recent piece by Steve Hartman, the master storyteller for CBS Sunday Morning (the best show you’re not watching).

I started this column with Connie Going for a reason. A compelling story in the first paragraph hooked you and kept you paying attention.

Unfortunately, way too many people open a cover letter with:

“Hi, my name is _____ , and I am interested in the position of _____”

Guess what the employer thinks?

“I’ve seen this same cover letter about 400,000 times. Next!”

So, let’s propose a new idea…

Rather than start a cover letter in typical, ho-hum fashion, lead with a personal story that either happened at work or on your free time. It can be dramatic, interesting, unique (like Amanda Munster’s genius savings plan for a first home), exciting or downright unusual.

If the anecdote relates directly to the job you’re after — and the skills it requires — you stand a much greater chance of the employer being impressed with your application.

In other words: a stronger cover letter might just get you hired.

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The Way You Write Cover Letters is a Complete Waste of Time

Why do we reads books? Go to the movies? Watch TV dramas?

Because human beings love stories. They move us, inspire us, transport us and above all…they entertain us. Why should a cover letter be a flat, unemotional document? Who decided they should exist only to regurgitate your resume? To fill up five bloated paragraphs with everything you’ve done so far in your career?

No one, that’s who. No one decided those rules. We all justslowly came to accept them.

***Oh, and you don’t have “Education” at the top of your resume, do you?***

Below, I will show you how to write your own story in the first paragraph of any cover letter for any job.

There are three advantages to this style:

- Catch the reader’s attention immediately

- Demonstrate your ability to do the job in question

- BE MEMORABLE

How to Write a Cover Letter People WANT to Read

Here’s the process. Feel free to write these answers down somewhere else.

1. Think of a job you want or plan to apply for.

2. List out the essential skills that job requires. Some employers ask, impossibly, that you have 500 different skills so try to think of the most important qualities of the position.

3. Now, the clincher. Look back on your life and think of a moment, a story or situation that exemplifies the type of person the employer wants. Again, it doesn’t need to be something that happened on the job.

One girl told me she wants to be a nurse. So I asked her: “Can you tell me a story that shows you can handle the challenges of nursing?”

Here’s what she wrote down, paraphrased:

As a teenager, I learned that my grandfather developed Alzheimer’s. While it was painful to watch him decline, I made a point to provide him extra attention, tend to his ever-growing needs and be as much of a caretaker as I could. It wasn’t easy, but that experience proved to me that nursing is my calling. And that’s why I’d like to work in the medical field and help others.

If you, the director of a nursing program, read that paragraph atop her cover letter, would it give you pause? Would you want to then call the girl in for a job interview?

Damn right.

This girl is not a novelist, blogger or any kind of “writer.” So what. The story itself is noteworthy and doesn’t require elegant prose. She simply explained what happened and then started the SECOND paragraph with the classic “My name is ____, and I am interested in the position of ____”